Nation - Tomb Kings - v1.03 released (March 2009)!

[llamabeast]

http://www.llamaserver.net/TombKingsPreview.gif

28/10/07: At long last the mod is released! Hurrah! I'm calling this version v0.8, since it's essentially finished, but still missing some heroes and presumably there will be some mistakes. I also want to improve compatibility with other mods - at present it clashes at least with Vaettiheim. I hope you all enjoy it, and please leave comments!

29/10/07: Released v0.81 which corrects bugs with summoning commanders, makes thematic vanilla pretenders available, and makes the priests and mages significantly cheaper.

30/10/07: Uploaded v0.82. Adds two national pretenders and two more heroes. Toughens up chariots by giving them natural protection in line with all other chariots in the game.

12/02/08: Extremely minor update. Fixed the Servant of Set's weapon, and added the Baphomet as a national pretender.

26/09/08: A large number of fixes, predominantly to make the national summons better value. See here (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showpost.php?p=640677&postcount=117) for details.

08/03/09: v1.00! A bold version number following a fairly large number of changes. For more details see here (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showpost.php?p=678870&postcount=153). No new units, I'm afraid.

09/03/09: v1.01. A couple of small fixes and balance tweaks.

09/03/09 again(!): v1.02. A number of small changes to the Ushabti and Ushabti avatars.

10/03/09: v1.03! Minor fixes, mostly toning down the Immortals slightly.

--

This is a nation mod adding the Tomb Kings, an Egyptian-themed nation of undead, to the Middle Age. The nation is inspired by the Warhammer Tomb Kings nation, although it is only very loosely based on it (most of the units are new).

Troops: Undead infantry, cavalry and chariots. Very light armour but highly mobile.
Commanders: Separate priests and battle mages, plus very powerful Tomb Kings.
Magic: Mainly death and fire, with some air, earth and astral.

Strengths:
- Powerful national priest spells to buff troops
- Strong national battle mages
- A wide variety (8!) of strong national summons, many of which are not undead, and also including immortal sacreds
- Exceptional MR on all troops limits banishment troubles
- Troops which never rout or tire
- Priests can awaken limited numbers of troops for no cost

Weaknesses:
- Undead counters can make your life a misery
- Battle mages (sorcerors) are expensive
- Difficult decisions in recruiting priests or sorcerors
- Limited magical diversity without boosters
- Undead counters really can make your life a misery!

Strategy hints:
- A Tomb Kings army with no priests is weak and overpriced. The lack of armour on your troops makes them very vulnerable. Make sure to include a number of priests with every army to keep your troops buffed. If you're able to get a large proportion of your troops fully buffed they will be very powerful.
- Recruit a few acolytes for every army. They will concentrate on keeping your troops healed in battle.
- Research Evo-2 quickly - Sulphur Haze is a powerful spell and works well with your troops' poison immunity.
- Recruit as many Tomb Kings as you can afford.
- Experiment with using the Tomb Princes and even Ancient Champions as thugs. They can be quite effective.
- If a Tomb King is killed he will lose much of his magic, but be reborn in an immortal form. An immortal Tomb King leading a legion of summoned Immortals could be a serious (though costly) thorn in an enemy's side.
- Both bless and non-bless strategies seem to work quite well. You have a nice variety of sacred troops and many of the national summons are sacred, so a good bless can be very helpful. Any of E9, W9, F9 and D9 seem useful to me.

--

This is the full version of the nation description, which is considerably cut-down in-game:

The lands of Nehekhara were once vast and fertile, and the many kingdoms of Nehekhara were powerful for thousands of years. The priesthood was a powerful force in the kingdoms, and worshipped a pantheon of gods. The Nehekharans were obsessed with death, and over time the priesthood delved into the secrets of the arcane to try to gain some insight into the mysteries of death and what followed.

Finally the priests made a grand prophecy: They foresaw the slow decline of Nehekhara; gradually the great rivers of the land would dry up, crops would wither, animals would die, until eventually all that was left was a great lifeless desert. However, to the priesthood the second part of the prophecy was even more important. In the far future, after many millennia, they foresaw the rising of a new god, and the land being swept by a great wave of benevolent magic. The land would become a paradise, and the dead, if properly preserved, would arise to live anew.

And so the priesthood devoted itself to preparations, and he newly formed order of Tomb Priests oversaw the construction of vast tombs in which the worthy would be buried and preserved for the long millenia until the awakening. Soldiers, nobility, wizards and kings were placed in the tombs, and legions of priests and acolytes performed months-long incantations to preserve their bodies and protect their souls.

The priests themselves mastered a form of immortality - while their bodies gradually deteriorated until they were little more than dried husks, they kept themselves alive by powerful death magics. Their existence was not a pleasant one, but it was necessary to oversee the preparations.

Gradually the lands of Nehekhara dried up. One by one the cities had to be abandoned as they could not be sustained. Eventually the priests and the last of the nobility retreated to the tombs, and the few remaining peasants were left to their fate. For thousands of years no living thing stirred within Nehekhara, save the occasional foolhardy explorer.

Then, catastrophe occurred. As Ermor fell, vast malevolent energies swept the world. Many lands suffered, but it was in Nehekhara that the effects were most awful. The foul magics of Ermor took hold and perverted the enchantments on the sleeping dead. The mortal forms of the dead could now never be regained, and the Nehekharans awoke as undead, the pleasures of the world lost to their skeletal forms.

Now a new God has arisen to lead the tragic armies of Nehekhara. They feel no hatred for the living, but suffer from a terrible bitterness about what has been lost. Perhaps by rebuilding their once mighty kingdoms they can regain some of their lost glory, and perhaps find a purpose for their existences. And maybe they can find Ermor, and exact vengeance.

[llamabeast]

So, this evening has been my first ever evening playing around with sprites. I thought I would build most things on the longdead sprites, but having collected them all and had a look I concluded they're not the best starting point. I think they must be from very early in the making of Dom: PPP, because they're not really close to Kristoffer's current standards (I actually feel awful saying anything remotely negative about Kristoffer's sprites because I was looking through all the sprites today and was absolutely blown away by the quality of many of them - it's an unbelievable collection of beautiful pixel art).

Anyway, I thought I would try my hand at making a more detailed longdead sprite to use as a template for the rest of my units. Attached is the longdead at different stages, finishing with the current version which I think I'm happy with.

Let me know what you think.

[Shovah32]

No attachment that i can see.

edit: you got it on while i posted http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif
They look nice.

[llamabeast]

Wow! That was fast Shovah.

They're disappointingly small after all that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I've been looking at them really close up for hours.

The main changes are gaining a pelvis and ribs, and also he's generally a bit skinnier and with more shading. I think his skull might look a bit funny, I'm not sure. He's doing an impression of Hamlet (you have to imagine him holding a skull).

[Sombre]

Very nice.

I have the same feeling when I've worked on a sprite close up for a while doing lots of little details, then I zoom out and you can hardly see any of it. But in this case, I think it comes across very well. Doesn't need any changes - skull looks fine IMO.

-thumbs up-

[Shovah32]

The 'hamlet' skeletonms almost seem like they are dancing if you ask me but ive always been a little odd... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Saulot]

Looks great.

You may wish to remove the extended fingers in the right hand if/when you add a weapon.

I might also suggest shaving down the shadow a bit.

[Valandil]

I assume that these will end up in lapis and gold trim?
Very nice though.

[llamabeast]

Yup, they sure will. I tried quickly last night (when I really really should have been in bed), but they ended up looking a bit psychedelic, so I think I will have to try more moody tones. Also use brown rather than mainly yellow to represent gold.

[Valandil]

As you'd expect anyway for sand-blown, aeons old metal.

[CelestialGoblyn]

Promising:)

[llamabeast]

Wow, that was a brilliant number of comments just for one skeleton - thanks guys! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I'll post another preview in the next couple of days. It's coming along quite well, I'm enjoying doing the graphics a lot more than I thought I would.

A warning again before I say any more - I'm deviating a bit in places from the Warhammer nation, mostly for reasons of making it work in Dominions but also a bit just because I want to. Hopefully this won't be too annoying for anyone.

The design of the nation is an interesting challenge. I want to make it feel very different to Ermor. The idea is not to have unending hordes of chaff - I see the Tomb Kings armies more as normal armies, except to their horror they find that they're all dead, and reincarnated not as they expected but as fleshless skeletons. Also they don't explicitly hate the living, they will just kill anyone who would try to steal their treasures, or prevent their attempt to reclaim the glory of their ancient empire. The one thing they do hate is the people who unleashed the enchantment that made them this way - not Nagash but... Ermor.

How to limit their production is the first question. From the army book you get the impression the vast armies of the Tomb Kings can just get up and fight whenever their king wants to. Obviously you can't have instant free armies in Dominions, and I don't want a repeat of an LA Ermor style summoning chain, so I decided to have them 'recruitable' in the normal way. The justification being that reviving them from their millennia-long sleep requires long rituals which are use costly incenses, balms and other materials, so gold and resources are still required. To be honest 0 resource cost would make more sense, but I don't like the feel of that. I'm imagining many priests slaving away endlessly carrying out the rituals of reanimation, so raising an army shouldn't be that quick.

In Warhammer the magic of the Tomb Kings is all priest-based, and is largely buffs of their own troops. To represent this I'm adding a number of holy buff spells, so that priests will be a critical part of a Tomb Kings army. Ordinary magic is also important in Dominions though, so I'm adding 'Buried Sorcerors', mages who were valued by their king to such an extent that, willingly or not, they were buried alive in his tomb when he died, so they would be with him in the afterlife. At present I've given them F2A1D1 (fire and air seem kind of deserty to me, and being as they were a death-obsessed nation even the sorcerors would have had some knowledge of death magic, though that was mainly the preserve of the priests). I'm not sure if that'll be too powerful (Aim + Falling Fires), we'll have to see. Also I intend to give the Tomb Kings themselves powerful magic, and the higher level priests will have death magic up to D2. Since there will be priests in abundance, that means the main magic will be Death followed by Fire, with smaller amounts of Air and some chance of random Earth and Astral picks on the Tomb Kings.

I've done the graphics for 1 infantry and 2 archer types so far, plus the Buried Sorceror. Still to go - heaps of stuff. 4 more infantry types I think, 2 cavalries, a chariot, tomb swarms, tomb scorpions, bone giants, ushabtis, three levels of priests, a scout and the tomb kings. But I am getting faster and using previous units as templates for new ones, so I am optimistic it will come along fairly quickly.

[llamabeast]

Man I'm verbose aren't I?! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Saulot]

Yes, yes you are.

Well, I'm rather unfamiliar with Tomb Kings, but what you posted there sounds good.

Will be waiting patiently for this one. */taps his foot*

[llamabeast]

I'd intended to post my progress here more regularly than I have. Anyway, it's coming along well, and I'm really enjoying myself doing it. I've done probably half to two thirds of the sprites, plus a similar proportion of the mod code itself. It shouldn't take too much longer to do most of the recruitable sprites, then there's the various summons to do as well. Some of them will be difficult (Ushabti!), but an interesting challenge. Perhaps I'll release a version before I go on to do those. I also still have all the descriptions to do, although I think they're all roughly stored in my head.

Anyway, to whet your appetites here's a preview of some of the national units. They're at double actual size so you can see them more clearly - although obviously that also makes them look rougher. Let me know what you think.

[Ballbarian]

Oooo llama!
I love skeletons!
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/skull.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/Poison.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/skull.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/Poison.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/skull.gif /threads/images/Graemlins/Poison.gif
Looks really good. I am looking forward to playing this when you are finished. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Sombre]

Nice skellingtons.

I know you're way ahead of me, but I'll try to get Ogre Kingdoms available as beta about the same time you release this. Then we'll have three warhammer nations playable. Four if Valandil gets Chaos released.

[llamabeast]

Ah well, what I forgot to mention is I'm going away for a week and a half tomorrow, so you'll probably catch up with me fast!

[Sombre]

Well then hopefully you'll have some Ogrey goodness waiting for you when you come back.

[Kristoffer O]

Looks nice. I like the scarabshields and the egyptian style. I way prefer these to my own smudged skellies. Nice work

The tomb kings was a WH nation I always wished I had had.

[llamabeast]

Thanks Kristoffer http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Glad you like the shields. I've been trying hard to get an Egyptian feel to the nation.


The tomb kings was a WH nation I always wished I had had.



Yeah, me too. I even bought a box of them a couple of years after I stopped collecting, in the hope of some kind of revival. Never happened though sadly - they're still boxed up. It just takes so much time, I always feel daunted these days. Not that I don't spend a lot of time on Dominions now instead!

[HoneyBadger]

As per the Tomb Kings' armies just getting up and fighting wheneverr their commander wills them to, well-I don't have a solution for that, per se, but it did give me the idea that they might have some lowly, weak, mindless-but expensive-chaff that just happens to be immortal.

Maybe a summon. They'd be balanced by relatively high gem cost for a weak troop, and the facts that A: being mindless, no experience over time, B: being constructs, they wouldn't heal without a lab, and C: the accumulation of afflictions.

[llamabeast]

Interesting idea HB. I've actually got an immortal unit, and like you suggest it's a summon. I went for the idea that the Tomb Kings should fear reaching the afterlife without any protection, so a few of their most loyal guard were embalmed with extremely powerful magic which has made them immortal. They're quite good soldiers, but I've so far found they're not overpowered (you can only summon one at a time and they cost two death gems to wake up). All this kind of thing might need refining later though.

I should post more on here actually, the mod's coming along really nicely. I did the sprites for three commander units today, plus a whole load more tweaks to the code itself. Almost all the national units are done now. I still have to do most of the summons, and write all the descriptions.

[HoneyBadger]

I was thinking along the lines of "the pharaos' various lovers". The rose which never fades, willingly bound throughout eternity to always be with their king-The sales-pitch practically writes itself http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif...which they are-the catch is, because of shoddy spells cast by Ermorians who were more con-men than conjurers, they happen to be mindless skeletons.

Ofcourse, there's no reason in the world that there can't be more than one breed of immortal-no doubt in many cases the wizards in question were on the level, native, loyal, and powerful. It's just my conjecture that in a lot of cases the Tomb Kings were duped.

After all, who's going to care in a thousand years whether you replaced the saffron in a spell with tumeric? The guy you're casting it on is gonna be dead, and so are you.

Only he's going to be dead and pissed off about it, and you're going to have 30 more good years on *this* plane, and then go off to some afterlive your victim's never even heard of, where they reward who ever dies rich and clever.

[llamabeast]

I've just finished my first ever sprite-from-scratch. It's an Anubite - a servant of the ancient, long-banished god Anubis. I decided to add some units of a general Egyptian mythology theme, departing somewhat from the GW army list. The Anubite is a jackal-man carved from black granite (this is a little different from other Anubite myths - I made it up, based on a mis-recollection of the Anubites in Age of Mythology). When Anubis was banished they fell silent - now they are awoken to serve the new god. They are powerful and agile soldiers, and close the distance with their enemies quickly in leaps and bounds.

I'm reasonably pleased with the sprite. I think it looks a bit gawky, but can't quite put my finger on why. Still I think it is fairly nice.

I'll attach a sequence showing the steps he went through, just because I think it's interesting and you might too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Man, looking back on the early stages is hideous!

[llamabeast]

Thought I would do a similar thing with my cavalry sprite.

The top row is the normal sprite, the bottom is the attack sprite. On each row the first picture is the source pic, the next two are progressively altered versions, and the last one is the final Tomb Kings version with a rider.

[llamabeast]

Incidentally Sombre - I am getting increasingly impressed with your sprites as I realise the amount of work that goes into them. You've done an amazing number of really high quality sprites.

And Kristoffer - even more so!

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Since you're going with an Egyptian theme, how about making your scouts the Royal Cat? Could go with something like the Uba's shifted form. Though whether mummified or skeletal... hmm...

I'd think to do something with a Skeletal consort, but seduction doesn't seem likely, unless you've got a real 'boner'. Oooh.. painful pun. Well, I'll leave it in.

"Royal Court"? Ritual summon to awaken an army?
Skeletal Consorts were entombed against their wills when their king died. No longer beautiful or pampered, they are driven by _blank_. Perhaps they resurrect lesser skeletons? Have some haunting/terrifying wail? Cause paralysis, curses? No real good ideas atm.

[llamabeast]

Hmm, I've really been struggling with what to do for a scout. A royal cat might be an interesting idea actually, I will have a think about that. The question is, how did it get intelligent?

A consort sounds like an interesting idea as well, although I also can't immediately think of what to give her. I'll bear it in mind though, it's suitably creepy and tragic.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Well, it doesn't have to be intelligent like a human, some animals can be fairly smart, and a few centuries of death will give you some learning time. With training, and possibly the voices of the dead whispering commands in your ears, you to can do things. The tricky part is that its a cat, why would it obey YOU?

For an unusual twist, maybe you can make it an immortal scout and/or assassin recruitable only from the capital. Considering that opponents usually build dominion walls at their borders, there would be some limits to their utility. But if they're slow to get going in the early game, then it would be a way to assist expansion.

Considering that the egyptians held cats in high regard, maybe it could be permanently blessed?

[Kristoffer O]

> I'll attach a sequence showing the steps he went through, just because I think it's interesting and you might too. Man, looking back on the early stages is hideous!

Interesting indeed! Hideous? No way! Most sprites start up as a vaguely humanoid lump of color. I'd say your mode of work is rahter similar to mine, but I think you have some good shape-up strategies. I tend to get stuck in details of a particular part of the sprite. You increase detail level mote evenly than I do, and I believe that is good.

And thanks for the compliment http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

While I have plenty of technical skill (transparencies, animation, editing basically), let it never be said I have artistic, aesthetic talent.

Here's my attempt at making the King live again.
Zombie Elvis (attached).

[llamabeast]

Actually LP, the shape and proportions of that are pretty good. It just needs shading.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

The shape and proportions are pretty good because I hijacked your longdead sprite. I have no clue how to go about shading other than random, semi-transparent dots, though.

[llamabeast]

Well I just treat each limb as a cylinder, roughly. So the leftmost edge is light, then a line of medium pixels, then dark. Then I go over and modify bits depending on their angle (generally the upper leg is more horizontal and therefore its top surface would catch more light). Then also I darken bits near joints. e.g. the top of the inside leg will be very dark. I take quite a, erm, non-artistic approach to it - I just try to guess how much light each bit will catch.

Also more recently I have been using colour filters to alter a load at once, saving heaps of work. So if I think the lower leg should be a little darker than the upper leg, I just select the whole lower leg and decrease its brightness.

[llamabeast]

I've just posted a backstory for the nation in the first post. Let me know what you think.

[Sombre]

It's a solid backstory. I'm basically ignoring the dom3 world and trying to sum up the huge Warhammer backstories in the descriptions, while adding in some extra stuff explaining necessary changes.

Looking forward to this llama. Ogre Kingdoms is about 75% of the way to a first release, where would you say Tomb Kings stands? We could set up a little warhammer only game when we have 3 or 4 nations ready.

[llamabeast]

Yeah, it's quite different to the Warhammer backstory.

Hmm, how complete - maybe 80-90%? The graphics is essentially done (just a couple of things to finish off) and the coding of all spells and units is done. So just descriptions (only just started on them) to go, plus little things like the flag, banner, and fort types. Tell you, making a mod nation is a massive job! I can't believe you've done several of the things! This one has taken an fairly huge number of hours.

[Sombre]

Yeah they're a lot of fun to make though :]

I've slowed down a bit recently, but I'm sure I'll go through another mad-modding phase and crank out a nation from nowhere.

Looks like I'll have to do a little burst on the ogres so I can release something to coincide with your Tomb Kings though. Maybe a very stripped down first release, missing a few units and so on.

[llamabeast]

Well I wouldn't rush. Personally I won't be up for a Warhammer mod game for about three weeks, as I have a bit of a busy time on. Would be good then though.

[Sombre]

It's not so much a rush, it's pretty much what I did with the Skaven. Warhammer armies tend to have a /lot/ of stuff. I mean the Skaven still have a load of things need doing on them and they're already my biggest nation.

[llamabeast]

Oddly Tomb Kings had the opposite problem. Probably half the units are new things I made up, because the original army list hardly has anything in it, weirdly.

Oh Sombre, I forgot to ask - any recommendations for the range of unit, weapon and armor numbers I should use? I used Vaettiheim as an initial template, so at the moment it clashes pretty much maximally with Vaettiheim, which isn't so good. Any thoughts on good ranges to avoid clashing with any of your mods?

[Sombre]

If the nation is for MA, here are the ID notes I update as I do MA releases. Ogre Kingdoms isn't on there, because I don't worry about conflicts until I reach the release.


----------------------------------MIDDLE ERA-------------------------------------------



Worthy Heroes v1.7b

-----weaponslots used : 770-772
-----monsterslots used :2800-2833
-----armorslots used: 380-381



CBM 1.1

MONSTERS -- 2851, 2877-81, 2888, 2890-2 (added 2878-81)
WEAPONS -- 659, 708-710, 751-5, 768, 769 (same as before, but with one conflict on 754 - move to 756?)
ARMOUR -- 252-264 (same as before, but with conflict on 264 - move to 265?)
NO SITES (site 890 no longer in .dm file)


Skaven -- Cool with WH, CBM

----Uses ID numbers

--weapons 670-685

--monsters 2140-2158, 2160-2174

--sites 993-5

--nation 73

--nametype 143


HOburg Alliance SE -- cool with CBM, WH and Skaven

-- ID NUMBERS USED

-- Nation 79
-- Monsters 2101-2119
-- Weapons 640, 641
-- Sites 760




AVERNUM v1.25 -- cool with CBM, WH, Hoburg SE and Skaven


----Uses ID numbers

--weapons 690-695

--monsters 2760-2781, 2783-97

--sites 990, 991, 992

--nametypes 144, 147

--nation 72


ARGA DIS V0.7 -- Cool with CBM, WH, Avernum, Hoburg and Skaven

--nationslot 75 -- fine with all above
--weaponslots 646 -- fine with all above
--armourslots 322 -- fine
--unitslots 2320-2330, 2354-2366 -- fine
--siteslots 790, 791, 792 -- fine




Basically I wouldn't worry about conflicts with other mods. They can be ironed out quickly for combined .dms in mod games and if I make a CBM version of anything I ensure that it is conflict free with all the other CBM stuff of that era, CBM itself and Worth Heroes too.

Anyway, the above might help you. Sorry if it's a bit rough around the edges, they are just notes after all :]

Clashes with Vaettiheim are 100% ok as long as they aren't in the same era btw, as unless this is the case, people have no business having them on at the same time.

[llamabeast]

Cool, thanks Sombre. I guess Vaettiheim etc don't really matter as you say. I want to make sure they work with Ulm Reborn though, as I think they would be cool opponents for each other (and it's much easier to shift one of them to a different era than to change all the unit numbers).

[Sombre]

Well the id ranges for UR can be seen at the top of the .dm file. Pretty sure those are accurate.

[llamabeast]

Cool, thanks.

[llamabeast]

Wrote a long description for one of the units. Turns out Dominions won't take such a long description, so I thought rather than waste it I'd post it here as a teaser:

In the dying days of old Nehekhara, the Tomb Priests saw they alone would not be able to protect the vast tombs once the last vestiges of their civilization had fallen. And so to the peasants, criminals and others deemed unworthy of burial in the sacred tombs, the priests offered a terrible choice: watch over the tombs for the millennia to come, and in return live to see the coming of paradise. Some came forward, and the priests chose the strongest to serve as Watchers. Through powerful rituals they were gifted with the same immortality as the priests themselves - while their bodies withered and dried to husks they would never die of natural causes.

Instead they stood guard over the tombs, watching as the kingdoms they had known fell apart and the last villages were abandoned to the encroaching desert. Unsleeping, they watched and waited, spotting any treasure hunters far off, moving stealthily through the necropoli, and killing without warning.

Now by the foul curse of Ermor, the paradise promised to the Watchers has been denied, their tireless millennia all for nought. Where all the awakening Nehekharans are filled with bitterness for what was lost, the Watchers are consumed by it. Now they march alongside the awakened armies to war, seeking vengeance.

They wear no armor but wield halberds salvaged from treasure hunters, and miniature crossbows firing darts which paralyze their opponents - equipment they have come to favour for exacting a swift death on unsuspecting trespassers. Their bodies are no longer as strong as they once were, the harsh conditions of the desert having taken a toll over the thousands of years, but they remain strong and deadly opponents.

[llamabeast]

Very nearly finished this mod now, but about to go on holiday for a week. Once I get back I expect to release it pretty quickly.

[llamabeast]

Well, that took a lot longer than I expected. After a very long time and a good deal of playing and tweaking, the mod is now attached to the first post. I very much hope you all enjoy it. Please leave comments - I will be very pleased to read any comment at all, and constructive criticism is very welcome of course. In particular it can be easy to lose sight of the big picture when balancing a mod like this.

Have fun!

[Sombre]

The preview looks excellent. I'll try this out tonight when I'm free.

[Juzza]

Ooo, cheap sacred archers, that makes a death blessing effective!!

[Humakty]

OOh, very nice, you modders know how to seduce me.
BUT, I wanna : at least a pretender, the 12 WH mods missing AND an undead poney. The last one is of utmost importance.

[Juzza]

I agree, an undead pony pretender

[Sombre]

Yes, I think we can all agree 12 warhammer undead pony pretender nations are needed.

[Humakty]

Yep, with nice colored ribbons in their pelt.

[llamabeast]

You're all crazy.

Hmm - pretender - for some reason doing a pretender never even crossed my mind. And I didn't think about adding specific standard pretenders to the nation either. Weird.

Things for the next version then I think. I will have to have a think about pretenders, suggestions welcome. The first ever Tomb King might be a good one.

Juzza - yes, I haven't tried it much, but I think a D9 blessing might work pretty well with the Asp Archers. I have been experimenting more with Buried and a E9/W9 blessing, which makes them pretty hard to kill (especially if you manage to get Resilience on all of them).

[Shovah32]

The summons that I assume are meant to be commanders(Ushabiti Avatar, Servant of Set, maybe Tomb Scorpion?) are not. The summons are all quite nice, although a little pricey if you don't have a fairly big bless for them.

The tomb swarm is very powerful(1 casting can pretty reliably take out level 5-7 indies) but also lots of fun. What's with the MR Negates tag on the spell?

The semi-immortal tomb kings are very nice but, due to the fact that they require upkeep, I don't think it's worth using them to call infantry unless you really need them and can't recruit them.

The national troops are nice, although tomb chariots might be a little pricey due to how fragile they are.

For a nation that seems fairly magic focused their non-capitol magic seems pretty poor. The nation is very similar magically to LA Ctis(although Tomb Kings have better summons), except that Ctis gets 240 gold, sacred, non-capitol banefire casters.

I'm guessing this nations is mostly built around getting a good bless and using its sacred summons due to its so-so magic elsewhere?

[Burnsaber]

llamabeast said:
You're all crazy.




No, actually they're quite sane. You just don't know pop culture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGGLENEEVYc

(Disclaimer: The comment proabably wasn't a reference to his, but in the internet, you can find arguments for ANY case)

[Theonlystd]

Very nice mod

[llamabeast]

Shovah - thanks for the comments - very helpful. It's really nice to have someone looking at it in such depth already.


The summons that I assume are meant to be commanders(Ushabiti Avatar, Servant of Set, maybe Tomb Scorpion?) are not.



Oops, that was a bit of a cockup. I'll fix that shortly...


The summons are all quite nice, although a little pricey if you don't have a fairly big bless for them.



Hmm, interesting that you think they're pricey. Balancing is tricky, and I guess I was scared of making them overpowered.
Immortals: These are expensive, because giving immortal sacreds seemed like asking for trouble. I think 1 death gem each would be too cheap, and they are powerful with a strong bless, so I guess these can't really change. Unless I made them 2 for 3 death gems - I suppose the time invested in summoning them is currently pretty serious.
Scorpion: I was just scared that they would be too powerful, what with trampling, high protection and fear. Have you tried giving them a support posse of priests to buff them and keep them healed? One can easily take down a small army even without a bless.
Ushabti: I think I was comparing them to Crushers, which cost 15 (Ushabtis cost 20). They do much more damage than Crushers, and are sacred, but they are a bit easier to take down. Maybe I should cheapen them a bit - national summons are often better than normal summons after all. What do you think - 18? 16?
Anubites and Servants of Horus: What did you think of these? They are quite potent but I found it hard to judge the price. They need to be a fair deal because they will be crucial if fighting an enemy who has potent counters to undead.
Usahbti Avatar: These guys are Tartarian-powerful I think, so I figured 35 gems was reasonable (not much more than 10 death + 20 nature for GoRed Tartarian). What do you reckon?


The tomb swarm is very powerful(1 casting can pretty reliably take out level 5-7 indies) but also lots of fun. What's with the MR Negates tag on the spell?



Sounds like another cockup! Thanks. Glad you think it's fun. Once again it was a bit hard to balance. I think against other players it will not be too strong. If they don't expect it it will be, but they are quite easy to kill off with magic and banishment.


The semi-immortal tomb kings are very nice but, due to the fact that they require upkeep, I don't think it's worth using them to call infantry unless you really need them and can't recruit them.



Yeah, the raising of infantry is meant to be very much a secondary ability of the kings and priests (you know the priests can do it right?). I didn't want to make another Ermor. Generally you are better researching with them. It's a really useful ability when sieging though. You can continually grow your army in the field.


The national troops are nice, although tomb chariots might be a little pricey due to how fragile they are.



Okay, I'll think about that. I always think chariots are quite devastating so I was loathe to underprice them. I will compare to other nations' chariots again.


For a nation that seems fairly magic focused their non-capitol magic seems pretty poor. The nation is very similar magically to LA Ctis(although Tomb Kings have better summons), except that Ctis gets 240 gold, sacred, non-capitol banefire casters.



Hmm okay. The sorcerors were deliberately expensive to encourage recruitment of priests, which are meant to be the nation's focus. High priests can of course skelespam and shadow blast, although they are not as good in battle as the sorcerors, who are mean with Phoenix Power and Aim, followed by Sulphur Haze or Falling Fires. But perhaps you're right that I've ended up making them excessively overpriced. I'll consider the prices again. You're right that they should certainly be magically quite strong.


I'm guessing this nations is mostly built around getting a good bless and using its sacred summons due to its so-so magic elsewhere?



Hmm, well not really, I wanted them to be all-rounders. Obviously they have a good range of sacreds but a bless shouldn't be essential for them.

What would you think of:

Buried Sorceror: 220 -> 190
High Priest: 260 -> 220

I think the High Priest is definitely overpriced, since they are pretty key and should be a fairly standard unit to recruit.

[Juzza]

I think the priests are fine, considering sacred units have their upkeep halved, but a possible decrease in the sorceror wouldn't go astray.

[llamabeast]

Okay, I am about to release a mini-update, with the following changes:

- Fixed commander summons
- Made thematic vanilla pretenders available
- Chariot: 45 gold -> 40 gold
- Ancient Champion: 50 gold -> 40 gold
- Buried sorceror: 220 gold -> 180 gold
- Acolyte: 40 gold -> 35 gold (having seen Man's monk)
- Tomb Priest: 120 gold -> 100 gold
- High Priest: 260 gold -> 210 gold and an extra +1 research bonus
- Tomb King: 450 gold -> 420 gold
- Ushabti: 20 gems -> 16 gems
- Bone scorpion: 22 gems -> 20 gems

This is quite extensive I guess, but I wonder if I had lost perspective by playing so many SP games with them. Comparing again to a nation like Marignon it did seem like everything was overpriced. Also I remembered that national summons should probably be noticeably better value than normal ones. It's possible I've overdone it but I think prices are probably more in line with the vanilla nations now.

A change I'm still considering is changing the Immortal summon so it summons two at once. Any opinions?

[llamabeast]

Actually the new version will be a little while yet...

[llamabeast]

Just released v0.81 (attached to the first post).

[Shovah32]

Looks very good. Thinking about what you've said, the new prices for the summons sounds about right (I wouldn't say 18 protection is terribly high since the scorpions can;t wear armour and don't benefit too much from protection buff spells).
The price reduction on the commanders helps, although I will always be annoyed by nations without good non-capitol mages(TK ones are fine, but not great).

I didn't look at them much but both the anubites and the servants of horus(iirc) seemed to be fairly similar to alot of regular troops(ie: not much better).

Will playtest more later.

[llamabeast]

Cool, will be interested to hear your thoughts.

I might be getting a bit confused (have only looked at Tomb Kings for ages now), but I reckon the Buried Sorcerors are pretty good for non-cap mages. In battle they are quite vicious.

Also the Anubites and Servants of Horus I found to be very effective. The Servants of Horus are probably less good normally, but specialise in killing undead and demons. They are also meant to be slow defensive troops on the battlefield, whereas the Anubites are meant to be offensive and punch through the enemy lines. Once again though, I've only played against the AI for ages, and that can make you think things are more powerful than they are. I do want them to be strong summons.

[Juzza]

hey um, all chariots have a natural protection of at least 5, I think it'd be fair to include this nations chariots in with 5 natural.

[llamabeast]

That's interesting, I'll look into it. It certainly would help their survivability.

[Sombre]

I actually don't have much detailed feedback to give here llama, but I promise I will in the future. I just wanted to say that as a first mod nation this is outstanding work and I know this is going into rotation as one of my SP game nations. I will certainly make a CBM version of it in the future, if that's ok with you.

You've gone the same sort of route Zepath went when doing a warhammer nation, changing quite a bit of stuff and writing it into Dom3 storylines. You've stuck a bit closer to the source material than Zepath did, but you've clearly moved further away than I have (though I have deviated from source material on a few fronts myself, it is necessary to an extent). That's not a bad thing at all, because the feel of the Tomb Kings is still there.

So one thumb up, second thumb sure to be elevated when I stop being distracted by other stuff and play them some more :]

[llamabeast]

Yep, feel free to make a CBM version. I'd be interested if you let me know what changes you're going to make when you get round to it though. I'm still not very clear on what the differences tend to be between the normal and the CBM versions of nations.

[Sombre]

Basically most mods are balanced according to vanilla units and spells. So if they have a guy with the basic 10 10 10 10 etc stats he'll cost 10 gold, regardless of equipment. The summons will be balanced against vanilla summons (theoretically) etc.

All I do is balance these things against the CBM altered versions. So a guy with 10 10 10 stats but crappy equipment might be 9 or 8 gold instead of 10, heavy cavalry cost less resources and have the CBM warhorse hoof weapon instead of just hoof, while light cavalry all get hoof added, summons are compared with the summons of similar type and cost in CBM,...

I also do general balancing, Sylvania CBM for instance is pretty much nerfed from the vanilla version, because the vanilla one was, imo, overpowered. A CBM version of Urdheim (the kobolds and dragons) would similarly nerf some stuff, try to bring it in line with the balance of the base CBM nations.

[llamabeast]

Have just uploaded v0.82. Changes:

- Two national pretenders added - the Gilded Scorpion and the First King.
- Two new heroes added - the Warrior King and the Avatar of Horus.
- Chariots' natural protection set to 5 in line with all other chariots in the game. This is a big boost, so their price has been put back to 45 (from 40).

[rdonj]

Quick question. I was playing the mod earlier and in one of my battles where I had nehekaran cavalry, archers, and death 9 blessed asp archers all firing into a mass of skaven I occasionally saw negative numbers pop up for damage. Can anyone tell me what's going on there?

[Sombre]

You were hitting a unit and forcing it into its second form, causing it to 'gain' hp. Probably slaves, possibly a warpfire thrower but I doubt it.

Same thing happens with jaguar warriors, hydras, skinshifters, spider riders, war lobsters etc.

[WraithLord]

Just noticed your mod and played a bit with it. Wow, its really really nice. Thanks!

[rdonj]

That actually makes perfect sense. Thanks for clearing that up http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Yeah, it was either slaves or jaguar warriors. They really love those two units.

[Sombre]

Skaven love Jaguar Warriors?

[rdonj]

Apparently. Practically every single army I fought in that game had 20+ jaguar warriors.

[Sombre]

Are you sure they didn't have jaguar tribe warriors? There's a pretty huge difference.

[Humakty]

This thread is going off topic. I must remember you all we were talking about issuing a petition which would render obligatory the use of undead pony pretenders(with ribbons) to all civs in all ages.
So you clearly see the sexual preferences of skavens and jaguar warriors has nothing to do with this thread.
Don't thank me for this precision, I'm used to be usefull all the time.

[rdonj]

I can't remember the specific names, just the ordinary independent slingers and warriors that you see. So probably what you said.

More on topic with the thread I feel it would be fun and thematic for there to be tomb kings only global spells? My tomb swarms never got to attack anything because they kept getting summoned at my mages' feet. Having a global version of that instead would be nice.

[llamabeast]

Unfortunately modding global spells as you describe isn't possible. It's interesting you say that the tomb swarms weren't helpful to you though. They were tricky to balance, so I left them powerful but made them slow and be summoned at the mage's feet. In the right circumstances they are very powerful, e.g. against knights or even some SCs. I guess if yours never got to fight it was because you were winning the battles quickly and convincingly.

Did you have any other thoughts or comments about the mod?

[rdonj]

Oh, I thought they were supposed to act differently because in the spell description it said that the spell could be cast at up to 25 range. I was just fighting a skaven AI so yeah... they usually routed a few turns before the swarms could get to them due to asp archer fire.

Hmm. Well, the army seems pretty thematically accurate, which is always a plus. At first I was a little put off by the lack of armor available to their troops, but it does make sense and I don't think they really need it that much.... I'm not sure if it's just me, but for some reason the priest spells seemed to give the game fairly large lag spikes, even in small engagements. I didn't get to play around much with the summons since I spent a lot of the game summoning immortals that I never used >_> They seemed pretty nasty though. While I was playing the PD seemed like it was a bit too strong against the AI, but then again, they were skaven and weren't throwing very tough troops at me for the most part. So it probably wouldn't be nearly so overpowered on nations with shields.

You did a really nice job on the graphics. Everything looks so dead and egyptian. I especially like the chariots and the tomb guard http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And maybe two immortals could be summoned at a time....

[Sombre]

The AI is godawful with the Skaven, just so you know. Skaven need combined arms to win, using their chaffy troops in conjunction with battlemages, warmachines etc. AI just tosses chaff at you and builds awful skaven PD.

[rdonj]

Yeah. I've only seen 2 warpfire throwers in two games against them. Tons of battlemages though. Towards the end they had a screaming bell casting wither bones and plenty of warlock engineers with dust to dust, so at least that's something.

[llamabeast]

I was just wondering if anyone had played this recently, and had any comments. I've been neglecting it a little, but am up for adding stuff again now. I'm actually really keen to play Tomb Kings in MP as well - might organise it soon (once some of my 5(!) current games finish).

[Saulot]

I've been playing and enjoying Tomb Kings. I'm kind of busy this week (and I got distracted last week by the patch / bogarus), but I think I'm going to get back to it, and do a short review of it either next week or the weekend after. Hope that helps.

[llamabeast]

Cool, that would be very helpful.

[HoneyBadger]

I had an idea for a Pretender: Living Curse.
immortal, dom 2, 1 death, 1 blood, 80 points for new path.
Fear 0 (plus bonus for death), 1 hp, att 25, def 15, prot 0. 1 attack-range 1 touch causes curse, decay, and weakness.
Casts Darkness at the beginning of battles. Causes unrest. Etherial, Flying, Stealth 25. move 3 battlemove 30. Blind. No slots. Cost: 125.

Shaped like a living cloud of darkness with a crimson center.

Description:
"For thousands of years the souls of unquiet dead have stood guard over the treasures of the Tomb Kings. That has been their only purpose, their only salvation and path to Paradise. That purpose has become their religion, and from the strength of their unending vigilance a malevolent entity has arisen. A cloud of sacred hatred and holy greed which has, over the centuries, gained a malevolent sentience, and now, out of a will to possess the very world around it, seeks to become a god. Death flies on swift wings!"

[DrPraetorious]

Make it domstr 2, prot 0, and price it at 125.

[HoneyBadger]

Done and done.

[llamabeast]

1hp, prot 0? Militia would kill it in seconds, even if it is ethereal.

I'm not sure I get it anyway. I await the description.

[HoneyBadger]

That's why you have to protect it. The Darkness is the real core ability, the rest is just thematic. Besides, you're forgetting about Dominion hp boost-keep it high.

It's really no different than running a Crone or other low hp rainbow mage.

[llamabeast]

Aha, I've just remembered that Tomb Kings are undead! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Okay yep, Darkness is super powerful then. I would worry it was too powerful, in fact.

[HoneyBadger]

Description up

[vfb]

llamabeast said:
Aha, I've just remembered that Tomb Kings are undead! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Okay yep, Darkness is super powerful then. I would worry it was too powerful, in fact.



Yeah, especially while the BE bug is around where a fleeing caster's enchantment stays up in the battle permanently.

[HoneyBadger]

I'm really enjoying these guys, they play a lot differently than "normal" undead in the game, especially with the holy spells and heroes. The Pretender is just awesome, and the artwork ofcourse is beautiful.

[llamabeast]

Cool, glad to hear you're enjoying it HoneyBadger. Which pretender are you using?

[HoneyBadger]

The Golden Scorpion guy. I gave him lots of Earth and Death, to maximize SC potential, but I haven't come up with what I'd consider an "ideal" build yet.
I'm not used to playing undead nations, so I'm still familiarizing myself with what magic paths are good and bad for them, and for Tomb Kings in particular.

By the way-did you give any thought to my "living curse" Pretender idea? I hadn't fully grasped that these guys are mostly based on the Warhammer nation when I suggested it, so I don't know how thematic you'd consider such a Pretender chassis to be, but I've read up on Tomb Kings now, and they do apparently have something atleast vaguely familiar to what I had in mind, in the form of the Casket of Souls.

[llamabeast]

Ah cool, glad you like the Gilded Scorpion. I was quite pleased with him.

The living curse sounded pretty cool, but I was concerned that Darkness would probably be overpowered. I mean, the TK are a huge advantage in any fight under Darkness, but normally they'd have to go to considerable lengths to research it. Having it from the beginning would be very powerful.

[HoneyBadger]

That's very true. I was hoping that the high point cost and very low hp would allow such a Pretender to be used as the center of a different than vanilla strategy, rather than just increasing the power of the nation overmuch.

Maybe if the Living Curse were immobile? That would help protect against bless rushes in the early game, but delay the darkness power from becoming a major boost until Teleportation spells become accessible.

[LoloMo]

Hi. I've been using this nation in the TigerCat MP game, and have been very happy with it.

The new patch have removed all magic paths from my recruitable mages and priests though. Hope llamabeast can rework this soon. Thanks!

[Zentar]

I loved the concept, mod design, graphics, national spells, and variety of pretenders for each type of strategy. My favorite pretender is the First King rainbow mage. Thank you llamabeast!

[DaveCG]

Have to say llama I love this nation, I really enjoy the whole "CHARGE!" thing I have at first, then ('cause I suck) lose like 30% of my army, but hey no worries, get to work prune priest guys, magic me up some more walking fly camper vans, anyway just writting to say I really liked them, and I don't know if you did the sprites, but they're really good.

[rdonj]

Yesterday I was playing the Tomb Kings and I realized something about them... most of their commanders and summons aren't undead, which means that they're affected by darkness. I had the Avatar hero in an army hit with darkness and he lost 7 attack skill to it. Likewise I had quite a few precision 3 tomb kings in there. I don't remember for sure if that's with the newest version or not, but I think so.

[llamabeast]

Thanks very much for the nice comments guys! Very much appreciated. The graphics are indeed mine and I spent many many (happy) hours on them, so I'm glad if people like them.

Good spot on the darkness issue rdonj. I will make sure to fix that in the next version, which will come in the not too distant future. I'm also planning to make the summons a little cheaper (I think at the moment they're only rarely summoned, which is a great pity) and make fewer of them require much-needed death gems. The asp archers' poison is going to become MR-negates so they are more feasible to counter. I may make the Buried recruitable-everywhere, because I like them and I don't like that a sacred strategy always ends up revolving around the asp archers (although they are cool).

I may also try to squeeze a couple more heroes in.

Someone said in a PM to me that they thought the Immortals were underpowered, being as they're really hard to mass. I just thought I'd mention that in a duel I fought against Sombre they were quite awesome. I managed to get about 20, and with a dual-bless combined with immortality they were amazing.

[llamabeast]

Oh, rdonj, when you said you had the Avatar hero, was that the Horus one with the flaming weapon? How do you like him?

Has anyone summoned any of the ordinary Ushabti Avatars? Are they good? I was hoping they'd be good.

Any comments about the other summons?

[rdonj]

Yes, it was the Horus one. I loved him, he's amazing. 120 hp, sacred, high prot even without equipment and some battle magic. Wow. I almost wonder if he might be too strong, but whatever the case his existence is a very strong argument for a luck scale. I also happened to have the tomb scorpion hero in that game. This mod has great heroes.

I like the idea of having the Buried recruitable everywhere because I never used them before and it makes them a lot more interesting as a bless chassis. If only this was an early age mod, they'd be the perfect counter to niefel giants....

I don't really think Asp Archers are overpowered, I compared them to sauromatia's androphag archers and they have same same precision, less health, the same bow, a bit more prot and are sacred for 5 more gold and resources each (and a temple). So they're a little harder to mass and only a little better if you don't have a decent death blessing. But I guess I haven't really seen how effective they are against other players so I could be a bit off the mark here.

I don't think the Immortals are underpowered. They're decent, solid units. And relatively cheap. I just wish there was a higher level spell to summon 2 or 3 at a time for the same gem cost per immortal. Possibly with a higher path requirement so not all of your tomb kings could cast it. The only thing I'm curious about with them is I'm pretty sure they have only 14 or 15 magic resist, and it seems that with all the powerful enchantments animating them that their mr should be higher than the base mr for the nation. Especially when tomb guard and buried have 16.

I haven't had a chance to summon the Ushabti Avatar yet. I even designed my pretender to be able to do it right off the bat but I didn't get enough research before I won my last game.

I suppose the Anubites are probably overpriced in comparison to Immortals as the main benefit is that you can use them everywhere and not feel like you're wasting their potential. Not too much though, as the Anubites are quite decent. I can't really say much about the other summons as I haven't used them recently.

Just as a general comment, it seems really weird that the asp archers are one of the highest prot units in the list.

[Sombre]

Yeah the immortals were a total pain in my Ogre *** during that duel. Most of the fighting was around his cap and we were both very short of gold, so having to fight the same really tough troops with more and more experience time and time again was not a whole lot of fun. The asp archers were far worse though - I just couldn't work out any counter to them. That's sort of an ogre thing though - plus my scraplaunchers were being ultra retarded and never seemed to actually aim at the right stuff.

Sorry I dropped out there btw llama. At first I put if off, then I forgot about it, then the computer with that copy of dom3 was out of action. Now I don't have the file any more.

We should play some more in the future, though it's 2-0 so far :[

[HoneyBadger]

I really, really like the tomb scorpions. Great graphics, great for a Pretender, with the high Prot.

I'm a little surprised you didn't include the Bone Giant, though, as some sort of high priced recruitable. They'd be great to bulk up an army with, without worrying about losing a hero. I mean, as tough as these guys are on the offense, they are FRAGILE.

I didn't get a chance to try out Horus or the majority of the summons. but they look great!

[rdonj]

A quick thought about the general ogreish lack of a counter to Asp Archers. I don't think it would be too unreasonable to give the ogres partial poison resistance. Largely because of the fluff for butchers and slaughtermasters, but I think if they rate 100 poison resist regular ogres could maybe rate 50? Not sure how much that would've helped though.

[Sombre]

Partial poison res never seems to work properly for me. I agree you could arguably give Ogres some poison res, but I don't want to make them too strong. I'll think about it though.

[Endoperez]

Sombre said:
Partial poison res never seems to work properly for me.



I think the poison damage units suffer is some percentual part of the original damage they took, and resistance lowers that initial amount. The effect ends up looking as if the resistance helps you overcome poison faster than another unit, relatively speaking. That, or I totally misremember the whole thing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Alderanas]

I was just wondering is the scorpion hero supposed to have no magic or priest ability? In the description it sounds like it should.

[HoneyBadger]

I think the idea may be that the mage's (mage/priest?) power all goes towards running the scorpion construct, so he doesn't have anything left?

[llamabeast]

He definitely does have magic, I just checked. I suspect this has to do with the current bug where if you have more than one mod running units start to have their magic paths stripped. It's new to this patch, and apparently it is going to be fixed next patch.

[llamabeast]

Right, at long last, I've made an update (available from the first post). The overall objectives are to make the Tomb Kings a nation which makes heavy use of summons, which was always how it was intended, and also to fix issues like the Asp Archers being overpowered, and most commanders being unable to see in the dark. The changes are:

- You now get 5 anubites for 8 gems, rather than only 3 anubites.
- Anubites cost earth gems instead of death gems, which are always too valuable to spend.
- Anubite protection lowered from 18 to 16 - they are meant to be offensive units, and should not be able to hold a line too well.
- Servants of Horus buffed - higher hp (12->16), and reinvig 4 (the blessing of Horus).
- Servants of Horus only cost 8 gems for 4, rather than 10 gems.
- The Bone Scorpion now costs 18 gems, down from 20
- The poison on the arrows from Asp Archers is now mr-negates
- Asp archers now cost 16 gold instead of 17.
- Buried are no longer capital only, allowing non-archer based bless strategies
- Almost all non-undead units now have darkvision (the Servants of Horus being the exception).

[HahnHolio]

Awesome Mod this is!!!

i love Warhammer based thingys ... but:

i have the problem that none of the specific spells show up in the spell lists under research!?

i play on pargannos map by llama, if that yould be an issue.

thanks in advance

HahnHolio

[llamabeast]

Hmm, they should do. I just checked, and they do for me. They are in Conjuration (starting at level 3) and Enchantment (starting at Level 0 with Summon Immortal).

The map shouldn't make any difference. Nor should using other mods in fact, but you could turn any others off just for a test.

[HahnHolio]

ya, omg, i am dumb ...
i did not patch after the install ^^
was still running without any patch.
after patching, everything is fine ...

sorry for being lamo :)

[llamabeast]

:) no worries.

[rdonj]

I'm in a game right now where I'm enjoying a good deal of success with 9w/9s blessed buried and mad amounts of summons. Buried sorcerors almost seem like the primary battle mages, as everything you get is immune to poison and sulphur haze is a pretty useful low level spell for them. I'm trying to produce astral fire-casting tomb kings but that has been slow going due to needing huge numbers of earth gems for summons and not having a very large income of them. And most of them having at most one astral.

I'm a bit worried about the bone scorpions. Sacred, high health, high prot tramplers with fear. Ouch. I think the fear may be just a little bit too much on top of everything else. I actually had 4 of them absorb crossbow fire from about 40 ulmish crossbowmen (and who knows how many short bows) and take maybe 20 damage... granted they're not cheap, but they're definitely worth it. It's a good thing most of the summons are in enchantment, tomb kings with the well of misery would be nasty.

The Undying didn't seem to be working on them though. Does regeneration work on things that are burning? If not that would explain it. Also, do you happen to know if soul slay works on lifeless/undead things?

[llamabeast]

Great feedback, thanks rdonj.

Yeah, strong blesses seem to work quite nicely with the Buried. I think the tower shield gives them a sufficiently good defense that the W9 bless makes them pretty hard to kill.

Buried sorcerors are meant to be the main battle mages, since their paths make them quite effective in battle. I was intending, though, that the player would end up with a lot of priests, because of the divine spells. What kind of balance do you end up with? Do you find the divine spells useful?

Why do you want astral fires-casting Tomb Kings, and why do earth gems matter for them?

Bone scorpions - interesting. They are meant to be nastily powerful, but maybe I ended up underpricing them. And they should at least be killable with some effort. I'll have a play with them at some point.

I'd thought The Undying did work on bone scorpions. If not I don't know why not. I'd thought of using The Undying on powerful undead as a sneaky perk of the Tomb Kings. Casting it on Tartarians would be great.

[rdonj]

At the moment, I'm building up buried and commanders for 3 turns and sending them out, most of the time it's 2 buried and a high priest, but in some of my forts I do 3 high priests. Earlier on I built more priests but the game is a ways in now and I have tons of them running around. I find the divine spells very useful, particularly Resilience as it brings buried from 4 to 13 prot, which is really useful. The Undying isn't really that useful on the troops but it's quite a bit better on Tomb Kings, scorpions and ushabti, especially for a nation with no native nature magic. Heal the dead is a bit hard to rely on as you can only script so far, and the ai would rather just cast revive dead when the scripting runs out. Strength of the Tomb has been bugging me though, the MR negates tag on it has made it pretty pointless to cast since almost every unit I have has 18+ MR when blessed.

I just like astral fire, it has a large aoe, does lots of an damage, plus with the high magic resistance on everything I'm using it's not very likely to do much friendly fire. Earth gems were a problem because I had an earth gem income of 7 for most of the game and I need to forge starshine skullcaps and crystal coins to be able to cast it since I've only gotten one tomb king so far with natural astral as high as 2. So it was tough trying to do that while summoning ushabti/anubites.

I'm pretty sure it does work, they do get the regeneration buff, it just wasn't healing the only scorpion that had taken damage in that battle and I think it was because it was on fire. I've seen it work on the other units, so I don't see why it wouldn't. Undying Tartarians would be rather nice. I don't think I'm going to get to play with them in this game though, I'm too close to winning. Maybe next time I'll focus less on enchantment.

[llamabeast]

Well, both Resilience and Strength of the Tomb have the MR-negates tag. I guess maybe SotT is less useful simply because the strength boost is less powerful, but having said that I think that for units like Buried, +4 to strength makes quite a big difference.

The best way to get the healing spell working is just to have two or three acolytes in every battle. The healing spell is pretty much the only thing they can cast, and they do so reliably. I'd be interested to know if you find them effective, but my own thought was that they were quite an asset in battle. That's a good thing because otherwise they're fairly useless.

Glad to hear you have quite a lot of priests running around. They are meant to be a priest-based nation.

[llamabeast]

Well, both Resilience and Strength of the Tomb have the MR-negates tag. I guess maybe SotT is less useful simply because the strength boost is less powerful, but having said that I think that for units like Buried, +4 to strength makes quite a big difference.

The best way to get the healing spell working is just to have two or three acolytes in every battle. The healing spell is pretty much the only thing they can cast, and they do so reliably. I'd be interested to know if you find them effective, but my own thought was that they were quite an asset in battle. That's a good thing because otherwise they're fairly useless.

Glad to hear you have quite a lot of priests running around. They are meant to be a priest-based nation.

[rdonj]

I didn't realize resilience was MR negates also, for some reason it seems to be successfully cast much more frequently. Maybe just because I usually don't have priests casting strength of the tombs on the first round of combat. I would find it very strange if one didn't have many priests running around, I'm pretty sure they're the most efficient researchers and they can cast several useful battlefield spells. I will try to incorporate more of the lower level priests when I play in the future to try and get more healing going on. I'm sure it would be very useful when fighting archer-heavy armies.

[rdonj]

Well, in the process of running a test game I proved conclusively to myself that the bone scorpions don't benefit from the undying, for some reason. Annoying, that.

The acolytes did prove rather useful though :)

[rdonj]

For the sheer joy of experimentation I just threw a regen bless on the buried and looked to see what that would do... when I got them blessed, the icon didn't show up and sure enough it didn't actually cause them to regenerate. I looked up the Regeneration spell and it specifically states it doesn't work on lifeless beings. So I don't know if it's possible to make them regenerate at all. I'm not 100% convinced healing works either, because I've seen heal spells hit and not do anything. I had a bone scorpion that may have gotten 1 hp from a heal, but then a second heal landed directly on it and did nothing.

[Sombre]

I have this horrible feeling a healing spell has to be AN to work properly, because healing is just like damage but with a different tag.

[Nasser]

I think there may be a conflict between Tomb Kings and the latest Conceptual Rebalance because my Asp Archers end up not having their special asp bows when I play with Conceptual Rebalance enabled. :doh:

[rdonj]

Are you sure? I have a game up with CBM v1.03 running and my archers have their asp bows. Maybe my version of cbm is outdated?

[Nasser]

It's entirely possible that it is something else. The only mods I was running were the latest CBM, the Mythology mod, and Tomb Kings.

[Sombre]

Unless Tomb Kings is specifically designed to avoid conflict with those other mods, then you have your answer.

[llamabeast]

Yeah, it's probably Mytheology.

[Nasser]

Well there's my problem right there. I guess if I have to sacrifice one of the two (Mythology vs CBM) I'll happily drop Mythology.

[llamabeast]

With regard to the regeneration issues earlier - it does work on all units apart from the scorpion. It turns out the scorpion doesn't get it because it's lifeless. I might consider changing that, but actually it might be quite good to leave it in as a weakness, the scorpion being beastily powerful and all.

The healing definitely works. But like all "damage" it fluctuates wildly. Some hits won't work, some will heal a lot.

[rdonj]

Alright, thanks for looking into it llama. I don't think it's a problem the scorpion can't regenerate as long as everything else can. They are definitely quite good as is.

[rdonj]

Should the Tomb Kings really be lifeless? They're not really magically animated constructs, and I would really like to have regenerating tomb kings right about now :P

[rdonj]

Now that the game is pretty much over, I wanted to mention something that's been bugging me about tomb king randoms. They are almost too random. It's very hard to get more than 1 in astral, earth, and air, which makes it very hard to get boosters, site search, etc in those paths without having them on your god. And I am not sure that playing without a good bless is a very good idea for nehekara. In the warhammerama game I got exactly 1 tomb king with 2 earth, but it was a bit too late unfortunately, I just didn't have the earth income to do anything with it. But what really killed me was not getting a single king with more than 1 astral. It's pretty tough expanding your magic diversity with them... at least when you're stuck fighting in 12 or so provinces for the entirety of your existence, involved in ridiculously bloody and devastating wars :P

[Sombre]

You started it by being edible. Well, semi edible.

[rdonj]

There is that small detail. I'm still getting used to this whole multiplayer thing. It's a bit like playing chess to sp's risk. And my chess-fu was just not jiving there.

[llamabeast]

Hmm, I'll have a think about the paths. I think they're fairly normal for MA though. I was thinking of Marignon when choosing them. They've got similar diversity to Marignon, but unlike Marignon they have at least some chance of getting level 2 in the rare paths, and they're really quite powerful in death, whereas Marignon have lower level astral with their fire. However, Marignon does have the big advantage of communions.

On the other hand, you could argue that being as they're so expensive, it'd be nice to have a bit more chance of getting a third decent path. Earth in particular seems thematic. Hmm.

You reckon they need a bless? I'm not sure how I feel about that. They are super-holy oriented, so it's not unreasonable. I always think it's a shame when the sacreds supercede all the other units a nation has though (as happened in this game with the Lizardmen - I only built Temple Guard after the first few turns). Do you have any thoughts on that?

[rdonj]

Well, you might be able to play decently without a bless, it's just very hard. Your units are pretty resource-expensive for what they're worth, and of course normal gold costs. And then they need several priests with each army to cast holy spells to keep your units alive. And your units are vulnerable to banish, dust to dust, and wither bones, the last one especially deadly to you. Their high mr is a bit of a mixed blessing since it makes the holy spells less effective. But they're much more useful on normal units than the astral blessed sacreds I had in our game.

Anyway, your early magic research is going to be hurt a lot from having to use so many priests early on, or you're going to have to take production.

It's possible you could do without a bless but it would make a lot of units much weaker.

[llamabeast]

Okay, interesting. Well, I've just been working on improving the buffing spells, and I've made them much better. The trouble I was having was that there is no "MR negates with difficulty" - you can only have MR negates, or MR negates easily, and they give too low a success rate on the buffs. But I had a cunning idea, such that by using #nextspell, each casting of Resilience and Strength of Tomb actually casts it three times. This gives a pretty good success rate - one or two ordinary priests are enough to fully buff a small army. I've also slightly improved the healing spell. I've found that non-sacred troops are now plenty powerful enough to make effective raiding parties. Reasonable prot and high defence gives them good staying power, and enemy troops get tired in prolonged combat. A group of 10 or so Tomb Guards were easily able to fend off some indy knights.

What do you think of the Anubites and Servants of Horus? The idea was that you could use them, alongside the Watchers, to create non-undead armies if the enemy was using a lot of Wither Bones. Maybe I need to make them even cheaper?

[rdonj]

That does sound like a decent way to get around the mr problem. You may or may not have noticed that I had almost completely stopped trying to use the holy spells there, because they had such a low success rate I could hardly get any of them to stick even when I had plenty of high priests. But having the holy spells work more consistently would go a long way in improving them so that they wouldn't need a bless as much.

The servants of horus and anubites aren't bad. I certainly had a hard time getting many in warhammerama but I had a pretty awful gem income for everything other than death. Making armies of them would be hard though without a pretty robust income. They could maybe use being a little cheaper, I wouldn't make them too much cheaper though. Hmm, anubites have to be repaired in a lab though iirc, so that does make a good argument for making them pretty cheap. Ushabti are almost definitely overcosted at 16 gems for one, but they are admittedly fairly powerful for when you get them, especially with a good bless.

[llamabeast]

I'm considering raising the cost of Immortals to 3 death gems apiece, being as they're right pests to fight if they have a strong bless. You could still get at least 20 by turn 20, which is a potent defensive force. Thoughts?

[lch]

Sounds okay. The biggest cost is still the mage-time, as you only get one at a time.

[rdonj]

Psh, by the time you had to fight them, pests is about all they were.... But no, increasing their price is fine. As Ich said, the mage time is by far the biggest price, as it requires an expensive tomb king sitting there endlessly raising them one at a time. And the amount you can get at 1 gem a piece is perhaps a bit silly.

[Jazzepi]

I'm considering raising the cost of Immortals to 3 death gems apiece, being as they're right pests to fight if they have a strong bless. You could still get at least 20 by turn 20, which is a potent defensive force. Thoughts?

I know I'm about to play these guys soon, but I have a hard time imagining the sacred troops costing 3 death gems apiece. I'm sure they were great in that duel against Sombre, but you were fighting in your own dominion, and in a small battle which means you could bring them to the front lines again and again very quickly. I think in a moderate to large game the fact that you'd have to shuffle them out of their tombs each time they died and drag them back to the front lines severely hinder their usefulness.

Not to mind the fact that it's extremely difficult to guarantee fighting in your own dominion unless you've got blood sacrifice, or are on the defensive, and I don't think you win large MP games by defending.

I think it would be important to think about how much you're getting for the gems you put in.

20 immortal troops = 40 gems and 20 turns of summoning by 420 GP mages
20 immortal troops = 60 gems and 20 turns of summoning by 420 GP mages

Or I could buy 6 skull mentors with 6 turns of forging. Or I could summon multiple bane lords with fewer turns.

20 troops really doesn't seem like a lot to me for 60 gems. To amass an army of 100 of them would cost 300 gems. D: That's a lot of Tarts, and other basically better units.

Jazzepi

[Jazzepi]

I was also curious, to the other people that have played this nation, what bless(es)/chassis did you use?

Jazzepi

[llamabeast]

Okay. I've decided to leave Immortals at 2 death gems for the moment - while they can be utterly deadly in defense, it's true that defense isn't the way to win and they do require a large investment of time. They're also effectively more expensive since the Tomb Kings that summon them are going to cost more.

New version coming in a few moments...

[llamabeast]

I've just released v1.00 (see the first post).

Changes:

- Asp archers and Buried both slightly more expensive; the Buried also lost a point of defense and a point of MR.
- Tomb Kings gain a guaranteed earth pick, but now cost 500 gold (up from 420). They may be the most powerful mages in the Middle Age now. Frequent access to E2 is a major boost to the nation.
- Anubites are faster but have slightly lower strength.
- Servants of Horus are much improved - they gained no fewer than 4 to attack between their weapon (+3 - it is magic after all) and their own skill (+1). They also gained a point of MR and another point of reinvig. They are probably still inferior to the anubites (certainly they lose in tests with even numbers of each) but are potent demon killers. They are also now summoned in groups of 20, so you basically summon a legion rather than faffing around with little groups.
- The nation now gets an additional fire and earth gem from its home sites, making it inferior only to Pythium for initial gem income. This should make it easier to use the national summons, which are pretty key if people start using Wither Bones or something on you.
- The national holy spells are *much* more effective. Each casting of the MR-negates spells effectively casts them 3 times on top of each other. As a result they tend to stick pretty well, meaning that it is very worthwhile to bring along contingents of priests to get your armies buffed up. That was a design goal from the beginning which in fact hadn't really worked out. That should also serve to make the non-sacred national troops more attractive.
- Servant of Set is a bit cheaper (8 gems rather than 10)
- Ushabtis are slightly harder to research (Ench 4 from, I think, 3). However, they remain very cheap (12 gems) and once you have one you will be completely elephant-proof.
- Bone scorpions gain two points of MR (-> 16), but are harder to summon (D5). These are vicious things.

Hopefully these changes will lead to lots more choice in what options you can exploit, and make things feel more balanced.

[llamabeast]

Also I'm terrified to see it's almost a year and a half since I released this. Eek!

[llamabeast]

Jazzepi - lots of blesses are quite interesting. W9 (and even W9F9) make your Burieds extremely vicious. W9E9 is curiously effective in making them tougher, and is also good for your Ushabtis. D9 (or D9W9) can make your Asp Archers very nasty - it can be hard to avoid their poison entirely, and with a high death bless any damage tends to cause an affliction. Astral is good for resisting banishment, and W9S9 can make your Burieds very hard to hurt. Nature is fairly useless since nothing can regenerate and nothing flees anyway. Blood might be reasonably useful, at least as a side effect if you wanted a Blood Fountain or something as your pretender.

I think now, though, you could reasonably opt for a low-bless strategy and go for scales. Your troops are all pretty decent once buffed by your priests. The fact that they never tire nor flee can make them pretty effective, and Strength of the Tomb means they can hurt armoured things.

I think there are quite a lot of different options on what you might want to focus one, which I'm pleased with. I'll be interested to see what you go for.

[Jazzepi]

I don't know if this is intentional or not, but when I play the mod with CBM and the mod installed, there are two Son of the Sun with "no description available". Both cost 0 points. One of them has Awe +1 from the start.

Also, why the heck do the mages with no armor, ~and~ no weapons, cost 3 resources?

Jazzepi

[Sombre]

Sounds like an id conflict. Unless llama specifically went through and checked it against the latest CBM, that'll happen.

You should be able to fix it yourself easily enough though.

[Gregstrom]

I think there are two Sons of the Sun in CBM - I'm pretty sure I've seen it with just CBM and no other mods in place. I think one has F and one has S, or something similar.

[rdonj]

Well, in Warhammerama I went with a W/S bless on an oracle, with high order, sloth, and magic. I don't remember for the other scales. It was a small game vs lizards, ogres, and rats, and I was terrified of wither bones, plus I figured there had to be a significant amount of banishment spam that would be coming at me. And the lizards have tons of powerful priests, so the extra magic resistance seemed like a very good idea (and most definitely was). My buried weren't quite good enough killers to take out ogres or E10 lizard temple guards, but sulphur haze worked well to kill both of those. And by the time I was fighting the lizards I had cloud of death, supplemented by the occasional shadow blast... all of which the buried are almost completely immune to.

I haven't tried any other bless with them really, W/S just seemed the best fit for them to me, plus it's cheap. I can see fire being quite devastating though. If you can get by using an earth bless it would be great for your tomb kings later on. And death would be nice as well. If only sorcerors were sacred, I can only imagine how delightful it would be watching your enemies become horrifically afflicted in a giant cloud of burning vapors.

And with immortals, keep in mind that they have map move 3. Sure, I was playing a small game where I had only a fairly small amount of land to fight in. I actually was never more than 3 provinces from the front, I think. But even without survival skills 3 map move should get just about anywhere pretty quickly. I would also think, if you had 100 blessed, well-buffed immortals you could kill just about any tartarian you could find. And do it again and again. But having them basically limited to a defensive role is a pretty significant mark against them.



In any case, this update imo sounds like a pretty significant boost to the tomb kings overall. I'll have to get a game or two going :)

[llamabeast]

I'm just about to upload another mini-update, v1.01.

Changes:

- I appear to have gone mad while balancing the Ushabti. They have now lost 2 points of protection and 1 of MR, the ritual blade has 1 attack rather than 2 and they cost 14 rather than 12 gems. They're still excellent. The Ushabti Avatars have gone up to 40 gems (from 30). They are still quite awesome and pretty cheap (considering you don't need GoH or GoR), and could easily be a strategy in themselves I reckon.
- Buried now cost 22.
- Tomb Priest cost -> 120 (from 100).
- High Priest cost -> 240 (from 210). The priests are better now that their buffs are so much more effective. Acolytes have stayed the same because they've not been improved, and their main cost is the opportunity cost of not hiring someone else anyway.
- Buried Sorcerors cost -> 200 (from 180). They were always meant to be expensive.
- The Gilded Scorpion now costs 150 design points, down from 175. He's extremely powerful, but short on slots.
- Fixed the Sons of the Sun. The problem was mysterious but I just worked around it.
- Fixed all the other non-standard pretenders so that they have CBM stats. Otherwise they would have vanilla stats even under CBM, because they're actually copies of the pretender units.

So I guess generally this update is a gentle nerf. v1.00 was probably a bit of a buff though, so hopefully they remain strong. The overall change has been a slight increase in expense and an improvement in magic and summons, which is probably to the nation's benefit overall.

[llamabeast]

Comments welcome, of course.

[rdonj]

Well, most of those changes don't bother me really. For example, the change to the buried. They're still only 8 gold more than your recruitable elites. The high priest change and the ushabti sound painful though. That was a pretty heavy nerf to the ushabti, they're not nearly as good now. I'm not sure it's a good idea to use them without a bless in this iteration. They already are large, expensive magic beings who if I recall can only regenerate health in a lab. It seems it's getting to be hard to use them efficiently. I don't suppose they are immune to petrification?

The high priest change will slow yor expansion down a bit and make an already expensive nation even more expensive. I'm not sure how much this particular change will hurt you. Maybe you'll actually want to create some of the lower level priests every once in a while.

[llamabeast]

Right! Ridiculously I'm just about to upload yet another little update, v1.02. This is planned to be the last change again for a while, so Jazzepi and anyone else using them in MP can settle to these final settings. Apologies for the multiple versions. Balancing can be tricky, and it makes your brain go funny.

Changes:
- Ushabti regained 20 natural prot and 16 MR. Their Ritual Blade also gained a couple of points to attack. However, they still cost 14 gems and still only have one attack. After I compared them to the crusher I realised that just being very tough was not a major feature, and there had to be some good reason to summon them rather than a crusher. They're meant to be a national perk after all.
- Ushabti Avatars gained *much* more interesting paths. When you summon one now you'll have no idea what you're going to get, but you can be fairly certain it'll be useful. Also they're not restricted to the national paths - the old gods they served had all manner of powers - so they can be used for diversification at a (very expensive) pinch. They're also much less likely to have weak astral, so they can't be trivially nailed by Magic Duel. They're not very good at water though. The river gods were among the first to be destroyed.
- Ushabti avatars had broken morale, fixed.
- Ushabti are now poor amphibians.
- Ushabti and Anubites gained #stonebeing, so needn't fear petrification.
- The Asp Bow had no resource cost, fixed.

Comments welcome as always.

[llamabeast]

Never let it be said that I'm not easily swayed by comments rdonj. :) The Ushabti should be worthwhile again now. They are super nasty against the AI, but I guess a player should still be able to bring them down fairly easily. I hope so anyway. Well, they are much less tough than Crushers, and I've never heard anyone say that they're overpowered.

I think I'm pleased with the gold cost increases though. It should be an expensive nation I think. And if you end up sometimes recruiting the cheaper priests, that's very good news for variety!

[Jazzepi]

I hope you're updating the mod on llamaserver each time you make these changes ;)

Jazzepi

[Jazzepi]

Bah! The priests and mages still have 3 resources instead of 1 ;)

Jazzepi

[rdonj]

Never let it be said that I'm not easily swayed by comments rdonj. :) The Ushabti should be worthwhile again now. They are super nasty against the AI, but I guess a player should still be able to bring them down fairly easily. I hope so anyway. Well, they are much less tough than Crushers, and I've never heard anyone say that they're overpowered.

I think I'm pleased with the gold cost increases though. It should be an expensive nation I think. And if you end up sometimes recruiting the cheaper priests, that's very good news for variety!

You have eased my panicked state of mind now as to the use of ushabti. I'm going to download the new, new, new! version and see about playing around with ushabti and ushabti avatars a bit if I get the chance. I especially enjoy the #stonebeing tag being placed on them, as it makes much sense. I still don't know how pleased I am with the gold changes, but I do understand why they're there. I suppose it's also very warhammery of them, with the small, commander-heavy armies the game tends to sprout.

[llamabeast]

Yep, updated on the LlamaServer.

The resource cost is because of the difficulty of awakening them. See the flavour text for the ordinary spearmen - expensive incenses and balms are required, explaining both the gold and resource cost. Because few of the troops have much armour, I found that without this it was just too easy to suddenly mass armies, which didn't fit with my picture of the nation at all (the priests tirelessly working to reawaken the ancient armies over many months).

I hope the gold cost won't cause commander-heavy armies! The intention was to generally slightly nerf the nation without discouraging the recruitment of the national troops. I'm always wary of creating a super-nation (it's easy to do without realising), and Nehekhara has a number of national strengths. I think it has a number of weaknesses too though, so I'm content with the balance now, although if people think it's strong or weak I'd be glad to hear (I won't change it in the short term though, as stated, to provide some stability).

[rdonj]

Well, not commander-heavy for dominions really. But with the high upkeep you have to pay on most of your commanders, it will limit how many units you can buy, leading to smaller armies as people will almost always choose mages over armies when their cash is running low. They'll be more or less like any other dominions nation in that regard, just faster than most with the heavy reliance on tomb kings.

[llamabeast]

Well, most of the commanders are sacred, so the upkeep shouldn't be too bad. The change was an extra 1 gold/turn for the High Priest. So I think they'll be okay.

[rdonj]

Hmm... I'd always overlooked the Tomb Princes before, but with an e9/w9 bless they can be rather shockingly effective at expanding :) Until it runs into an indy fire mage who casts fire darts once, gets lucky and nails you for 10 damage, and then the lingering fire damage kills him. Curse you, lucky indy fire mage!

Also, I guess I was overreacting a bit to the gold cost. I just am remembering back to warhammerama where I had like 1000 upkeep, with mostly just sacred commanders and my immortals.

[llamabeast]

Right! Madness! I appear to be gently cracking up and thinking about this mod too much. As such I'm just about to upload a v1.03. This time I promise I won't release any more for a bit, and sorry everyone for the ridiculous flurry.

- I was still feeling very uncomfortable about the Immortals. They are your best troops, sacred _and_ immortal. Being as you have many H3 priests and are likely to take high dominion, it might be very feasible to push your dominion and fight major battles with these unkillable troops. Not only are they immortal, they're also extremely hard to kill. Possibly more importantly, they were probably the most unfair _feeling_ part of the mod, even if they weren't too overpowered. With mod nations you have to be careful because people always wonder whether the balance was done properly. As such they now cost 3 death gems, and are mildly easier to kill (-1 def, 25% more fire vulnerability, a bit lower MR). Because of their high protection and tower shield killing them will still be a victory for your opponent, and will still be a hollow one because of their immortality. I think they are still worth going for.
- The Tomb Kings were adept at soloing with their AOE fire. That was never the intention, I just wanted them to be able to defend themselves from assassins. As such they now just have secondary effect fire, rather than small area fire. With the recent magic improvements you can easily forge them a fire brand if you want to.
- I was really struggling with the cost of the Ushabti and Ushabti avatars. Finally I thought I'd go for the cheaper option because I like them. That seems to be a common rule in Dominions, nicely thematic things are also affordable. The resulting change is a frankly undramatic one - Ushabti go back to 12 earth gems (from 14), and avatars to 35 earth gems (from 40). What a waste of llamabrainpower!

[llamabeast]

Yeah, the Tomb Princes are pretty awesome really. Try giving one two Black Steel Tower Shields!

[llamabeast]

Sorry, Kite Shields, they can't hold Tower Shields because they're mounted.

[rdonj]

Hmm... now we've got the kind of funny situation where an unequipped prince (140 gold) is a more effective fighter than an unequipped tomb king. Unthematic for sure, but having made a game just to eploit the fact that with a good bless they're great at epanding AND can't die as long as you stay in your dominion... I can completely see the reason from a balance point of view. But it's just not fair, all the other 500 gold commanders can do it! /cry. Actually tomb princes may be a bit undercosted come to think of it, although I'm sure it's already hard enough to convince people to buy them. I think I'll play around with them some more before you hit them with the nerf stick :)

I'm not really sure that the world is in so much danger from a dominion push/immortals strategy. You'd still need buried pushing your borders so you could preach down enemy dominion, and your god will be dormant until year 3 to give you a good bless, limiting your dominion spread somewhat. But I will grant that it is probably possible to spread your dominion much more than your opponent would like. And if you own one or two capitols, that's a lot of ground that probably has your dominion in it to fight your immortals in. The immortals are still good, but you need to have a more cohesive strategy to use them now, so I suppose that is a point in the direction of balance.

[llamabeast]

Hmm... now we've got the kind of funny situation where an unequipped prince (140 gold) is a more effective fighter than an unequipped tomb king. Unthematic for sure, but having made a game just to eploit the fact that with a good bless they're great at epanding AND can't die as long as you stay in your dominion... I can completely see the reason from a balance point of view. But it's just not fair, all the other 500 gold commanders can do it! /cry. Actually tomb princes may be a bit undercosted come to think of it, although I'm sure it's already hard enough to convince people to buy them. I think I'll play around with them some more before you hit them with the nerf stick :)

Well, the Tomb Prince is in a chariot. It's not that he's fundamentally stronger. If you get the Warrior King hero (a Tomb King in a chariot) I'm pretty sure he's much stronger than a Tomb Prince. Anyway like you say it sounds like it was good for balance if you were successful in using them for expansion. As for all the other 500 gold commanders being able to do it - yep, but I think the Tomb Kings are probably more powerful mages than any of them!

I doubt that I will nerf the Tomb Princes. People never buy non-mages anyway, so it's nice if a recruitable thug is worthwhile for once. I'm glad if you're liking them. Actually I don't foresee any more nerfing in general, subject to feedback from MP games; I've fixed the issues that were concerning me.

I'm not really sure that the world is in so much danger from a dominion push/immortals strategy. You'd still need buried pushing your borders so you could preach down enemy dominion, and your god will be dormant until year 3 to give you a good bless, limiting your dominion spread somewhat. But I will grant that it is probably possible to spread your dominion much more than your opponent would like. And if you own one or two capitols, that's a lot of ground that probably has your dominion in it to fight your immortals in. The immortals are still good, but you need to have a more cohesive strategy to use them now, so I suppose that is a point in the direction of balance.

Great! That sounds exactly like what I was aiming for.

Thanks for all of your comments rdonj. Your feedback is absolutely invaluable. It also makes it much more fun to have people commenting on things!

[Sombre]

I must admit I quite like the idea of Tomb Kings being badass as thugs/SCs. They are pretty nuts in warhammer after all, even leaving spells aside.

[llamabeast]

Well you can make them just as badass as they were for a few gems. A fire brand is better than their staff was, so they're only 10 (or 6) gems away. Actually I just did a little test, and even with just a demon whip (5 gems) and a W9 bless they're pretty effective. I suspect there are definitely some tactics to be had using them as top-end thugs.

[rdonj]

Perhaps tomb kings should get a change shape command that gives them a chariot :P

[llamabeast]

. :)

[Gregstrom]

There's a minor bug I've just found. The Lord of the Summer Plague's Plague Bow isn't showing correctly. It's only a guess, but I think this might be related to CBM's Plague Bow being different to the vanilla one.

[Hadrian_II]

I have also found an issue, cbm is using weapon 708 for a rusted sword, and you are using it for asp bows so if cbm is added after the tombkings the asp archers cannot shoot. Maybe there are also other things like that in the mod.

i assume on llamaserver cbm is added first?

[llamabeast]

Wow! That is a bad one. I won't release an update straight away in case any more things come to light, but I'd better fix that soonish. I'll do a systematic check for clashes with CBM. Funny that I didn't do that before actually. I think CBM wasn't used so widely when I first made the mod.

There's no way that I know of to control the load order for mods. Hopefully it's right in Chronicles. Did your Asp Archers not have Asp Bows before? I thought that that change was before Chronicles started.

[Sombre]

I maintain that mods load in the order you 'tick' them in the preferences screen. I have seen no evidence to convince me otherwise.

[llamabeast]

Well I tried that yesterday and it didn't seem to work. I wasn't super scientific about it though, I might have got confused.

[rdonj]

I just want to say, that awakened scopion hero is amazing. I got him late in year 1... self buffing The undying and Resilience, and he picked up heroic strength. Usually strength isn't that great on a trampler, but I just watched him easily solo an indy elephant provinces. Even without a bless, he can kill an elephant in one round of attacks, and with high prot, decent regeneration and a fear aura, he never dropped below 80 hp.

He also has the reanimate command and I don't quite seem to be able to preach with him. Not sure if you intended that or not.

[Radio_Star]

A few quick things re Tomb Kings:

I haven't seen it mentioned, but if you GoR a bone scorpion, it picks up D2H3. This means that you can give it a death gem and cast soul vortex. Having a regenerating, soul vortexed, high prot, trampling, fear-causing, blessable unit or two mixed in with your own legions is pretty cool.

Also, if there was ever a nation that screams for a bootstrap into blood, I think it's Tomb Kings. All the blood summons work well under the darkness that you're going to be putting up in every battle, you can start churning out blood stones to fuel Ushabti spam and if you decide to go the vampire road, your national undead buffs (being designed to work on highish MR) are nothing short of awesome in support.

I also have a mechanics question. Does ethereal prevent the secondary effect from kicking in? If it doesn't, watchers would be a phenomenal SC killer.

[rdonj]

Noooo! I lost my avatar of Horus. Ah man, I've had that thing for years. 434 kills, heroic toughness with +142 health... all to a time out while fighting gift of healthed pangaeans who just could not be killed fast enough, in a province that looked to be easy pickings :hurt:. It's going to take a while to get over that. On the bright side I'm finally getting close to having the earth income to summon Ushabti Avatars, and if they're anything near as good as the hero was that should make this game a lot easier....

This is the game where I was going to try to use ushabti and anubites. I'm having a lot of trouble doing so though, as it is just too tempting to use Tomb Kings as SCs and they need mostly earth gem items. And my earth income has varied between 6-9 gems a turn for most of the game, so I don't really have many to spare. And since I decided to not use a bless in this game the ushabti aren't quite as tough as they could be. Anyway, I still think the Ushabti are almost too expensive to summon. I just keep thinking, I get 2 ushabti for the price of summon fall bears. They're basically the same level spell, and I would be quite willing to bet 10 fall bears are more durable than 2 ushabti, and probably do more damage. With a good blessing it would be slightly better, but I still don't think they would be worth quite that many gems, especially with their lab repair requirement. Anubites I think are more or less fine, I would consider buying them even if I didn't need non-undead soldiers as they can be quite deadly. The competition for earth gems is always going to be pretty brutal for this nation though.

Oh, I also managed to lose the awakened scorpion hero to pangaea as well. He served me well, winning many battles and greatly speeding up my expansion, but in the end he ran into too many centaur cataphracts and they were able to finally bring him down. First bone scorpion I ever lost to the AI. Next time maybe I'll buff him with something more than just the undying....

[rdonj]

Any chance tomb kings will ever get recuperation on their first form? Having tomb kings riddled with afflictions can be a bit frustrating, as the best way to fix that is to get them killed so they become immortal... but shedding afflictions that way will ruin many of them as SCs and mages anyway. Makes those D4 kings really important.

[Sombre]

I also have a mechanics question. Does ethereal prevent the secondary effect from kicking in? If it doesn't, watchers would be a phenomenal SC killer.

It counts as poison damage according to llama, so poison res would stop it. Not sure about ethereality.

[Trumanator]

A couple questions-
1- What makes the Asp bow secondary effect different from simple poison?
2- Do all TKs have the same paths after dieing, or is it some other mechanic?

[llamabeast]

1. The asp bow poison is MR-negates (the victim can disbelieve in the phantasmal asp). This wasn't originally the case, but due to the way poison arrows work (victims may still be poisoned through armour and shields I believe) they were excessively deadly with a D9 bless.

2. After dying they have all magic paths reduced by one. They also become physically weaker. However, further deaths do not affect them.

[Trumanator]

Another, more open ended question. How necessary is the E9 W9 bless? I am almost definitely taking the W9, but am agonizing over the necessary scales sacrifices to get the E9. Is the extra prot key, or would E8 be almost as good?

Also, I am trying to use the princes to solo indies, and even with E9W9 they are still pretty hit and miss.

[rdonj]

The e9 is more useful for kings and princes. With the e9 it's much easier to use them early, and you can expand with e9/w9 tomb kings reasonably well. E9 does help the buried, but you really need to combine that with the resilience buff for their protection to be in any way meaningful. E9/W9 is a pretty expensive bless for the tomb kings though.

[llamabeast]

E9 is much better than E8. The +4 protection is very handy on the Buried. With W9E9 + Resilience they are pretty hard to kill.

However, other blesses are also good. F9 obviously makes the Buried much more vicious. S9 makes them harder to kill (twist fate makes a big difference for fragile units like Buried, and obviously the MR is valuable too). D9 is very nasty on Asp Archers. I've had good results with all of those. I have to say that W9 has very good synergy with all of them though (more attacks for flaming weapons/asp archers, more defense makes twist fate better).

Certainly it would be worth considering say E9S9, W9S9 or F9W9 as well as other permutations.

[Trumanator]

I am thinking about some other blesses, but the thing about the E9W9 bless is that it helps both the sacred troops and the priests/kings. W9S9 would be my second choice probably, but the extra MR doesn't help the TKs at all since they already have 18 MR, and the priests could care less, though the protection from a stray arrow is useful. The main problem with the W9 bless as I see it is that it is a real PITA with the way quickness interacts with archers. By rights they should just shoot twice, but instead they decide to shoot, then run forward a bit, all the way to the front line. :( Otherwise I would really look into a W9D? bless...

I hope I don't sound like I'm just shooting down everyone's ideas, I'm just trying to figure out the optimal playstyle for me.

[SlipperyJim]

Got an ironic message in my current game:
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/296/ermormessagetotombkings.png

Of course, the irony is that I am playing the Tomb Kings. Stupid Ermorians don't release that we're already dead....

On the other hand, perhaps the AI is smarter than I'm giving him credit for being. MA Ermor knows that we're all dead, and they want to add our noble Nehekharans to their foul legions!

...

Anyway, I'd also like to add my thanks to llama for this mod. I'd been thinking about it for a while, and I finally got around to trying it. Wow, what a cool mod! :) I might have even found a new favorite. The artwork is very consistent and adds to the "feel" of the mod. The units are excellent, and I've found uses for almost all of them. (A better player would use all of them, I'm sure.) I haven't gotten much magical research done, but I'm looking forward to trying out the national summons.

Note to other TK players: Marignon is just as nasty as you'd expect them to be. Sieging their home province with your undead armies is painful. Then the actual storming of the fortress is quite painful! I soon learned to hate those Holy Pyre spells. :mad: But Marignon is gone now, and I'm looking for my next target....

[Jazzepi]

Just a few comments.

I found the TKs a touch too expensive for 500 GPs. My main gripe is that with a nation like EA Neiflhem, you're recruiting a very powerful thug, quite possibly even an SC level creature, for the same cost who also has very good paths.

While the TKs have great paths, they tend to be lots of low level ones which makes them good for site searching, but difficult to employ in combat as caster mages (outside of death magic) without gear. So to me, the 400 or so price tag was much more reasonable. I often just had TKs sitting at home, researching, or playing forge ***** because they had good paths.

This is mainly due to the fact that the only other good combat mage you have is the undead sorcerer, with the high priest being almost useless unless you're looking to skelly spam.

I dunno, I still like the nation a lot, but I felt like the TKs shouldn't have been increased in price.

Jazzepi

[Sombre]

The fact that they're immortal is clearly a pretty big part of their price tag. But it's relatively hard to abuse I guess, since they get weaker after the first death. Even so, you can worry about them a lot less than say, a Slann or oreiad.

[Jazzepi]

The fact that they're immortal is clearly a pretty big part of their price tag. But it's relatively hard to abuse I guess, since they get weaker after the first death. Even so, you can worry about them a lot less than say, a Slann or oreiad.

Honestly, the immortality is basically worthless. If they were immortal, and kept their paths then I would completely agree with you that they're worth 500 gp.

I'd much, much rather see them lose the immortality and come down in price.

Jazzepi

[rdonj]

Losing paths on them is quite painful. Weakened tomb kings can be very difficult to use effectively. This is part of why we need a tomb kings guide :P

[Trumanator]

A suggestion for the Ushabti Avatars- I think it would be nice if at least 2 of their non-sorcery randoms were linked. I just summoned my first in Tourmaline, and he was pretty underwhelming, 1F1A1E3D. While I will try to put him to good use, its not like I don't get those regularly from my kings. A 2 in A especially would have been a real godsend. I recognize that I was mostly just unlucky, but it still left me wishing I had my E gems back. I just feel that for 35 E and ench 8 you should really get something with a bang.

@ rdonj- I might post a bit of a guide after this game if I get anywhere, but I don't pretend that I've really had any major brainstorms.

[rdonj]

Even if the avatar didn't get amazingly good paths, it's still quite usable as an SC. Though ushabti avatars do annoyingly have the does not heal tag, making it somewhat problematic to use them.

Go for it :) Like I've said before, some of the randoms on tomb kings are just so random it's hard to decide what to do with them. It seems to me like they are either thugs, forgers, or army buffers depending on their paths. Sorcerers and high priests can handle just about all the battle magic you really need.

[Trumanator]

Okay, having now summoned at least a few avatars, I am definitely coming down on the side of saying they at least need some adjustment. Every single one of them save one B3 one has been inferior to my TKs in paths, if not in stats. While I will most likely continue to summon them, I think that serious consideration should be put toward consolidating the randoms. While the spread out randoms are not so bad for the TKs, when it comes to what is billed as a national SC, it becomes increasingly aggravating. 35 E gems and researching to ench 8 is a pretty substantial investment, and feel that it wouldn't be that much of a killer to expect a little more oomph.

[SlipperyJim]

Ushabti Avatars are SCs. As long as they have enough magic for a few buffs (Summon Earthpower, Fire Shield, and Resist Magic are a few of my favorites), then they have what they need. As an added bonus, the Avatars with Blood Magic are an effective (and expensive) way to diversify with a little bit of Blood. Blood Stones, anyone?

I have found the following gear to be very useful on my Avatars:

Fire Brand
Vine Shield
Wraith Crown
Bone Armor
any other SC/Thug gear, such as Boots of Quickness & Antimagic Amulet

A couple of Avatars just smashed a large MA Ermorian army. That said, I'm glad I sent TWO, because a bloody Grand Thaumaturg cast Paralyze on one of my Avatars. But he didn't get both of them....

[Squirrelloid]

The gilded scorpion is really OP as a pretender chassis.

Stats:
E1D2 Dom2 Fear+0+D Trample UD Lifeless PR100 CR100 Str/att/def 20/14/10 Prot 19 Enc 0 NewPath 40 150 pts.

First of all, I'm not sure its possible to balace an Enc. 0 trampler available turn 1. You can attack blind with it at no risk. Barbs? Knights? No problems. Its got great morale and MR because its a pretender. It has great protection. It has decent-good att/def stats. And there is almost nothing (stellar cascades at evo 5) you can do to give it fatigue. The thing is literally 'kill the first player you meet' good, no matter who they are, at least for MA.

Compare to a Cyclops, it has slightly less protection (2 less once you factor out E magic), same hp, lower strength (irrelevant, you're trampling), slightly better net att/def, 2 paths instead of 1, lower new path cost, **Enc. 0**, trample, CR+PR, and doesn't need to be handed a weapon like the cyclops does. And its only 25 points more. Its at least 125 points better. The thing is more powerful than a gorgon because it has no weaknesses.

The only other potential Enc. 0 size 6 trampler at game start is a colossal fetish with Boots of the Behemoth. It has one path to start, no fear, only AP4 (matters a lot for trample), and bad att/def stats (7/6). And it requires a gem investment to give it trample.

Otherwise we're talking lots of enchantment research and some gems to get them - long enough that counters exist.

[Sombre]

There's a weapon conflict between this mod and CBM 1.6

They share the 708 slot currently. This would be best fixed by moving the asp bow to 699 which is pretty free as far as MA nations go.

[Trumanator]

lol, better than the divine flail heavy cavs you could have before :D

[Trumanator]

I've written a guide for this nation, comments and such would be appreciated, and it might be worth linking to in the OP of this thread.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=44687

[Sombre]

There's a weapon conflict between this mod and CBM 1.6

They share the 708 slot currently. This would be best fixed by moving the asp bow to 699 which is pretty free as far as MA nations go.

Just want to reiterate this. It is literally the only conflict between all the warhammer ma nations and cbm, so if it could be fixed officially, that would be awesome.

Of course it's fixed in the warhammer ma compilation.

[Koral]

The gilded scorpion is really OP as a pretender chassis. Stats:
E1D2 Dom2 Fear+0+D Trample UD Lifeless PR100 CR100 Str/att/def 20/14/10 Prot 19 Enc 0 NewPath 40 150 pts.

You also need to remove the scorpion hero. (Or make him a summon) It is the same enc 0 trampler, but holy and priest. It won't have awe but regenerates without research after self-buffing and can get heroic abilities.

I got lucky in SP and got it on turn 1. Thats an autowin.

[Ragnoff]

A very minor request, but most of the other mods based on the warhammer universe are named Warhammer ArmyName, which makes them easy to find as a group.

Any chance of this one following suit?

Ragnoff

[llamabeast]

Do you mean the thread name or the .dm file name?

[Ragnoff]

the dm file and folder in the mod directory, now that I think of it it is not that big of a deal, but I spent a while one time trying to figure out where the Warhammer - Dwarfs went! downloaded that sucker 3 times before I realized it was just called Dwarfs :(

[Jack_Trowell]

As a new warhammer army book for Tomb Kings is coming this month, is there a plan to use it as inspirations for expending this mod ?

Among the new units :

- Ushabtis with great bows (expensives and few in numbers, but with enough strength to kill an armored knight)

- Bone giant has with one version having a massive bow of the sands (think "moving ballista")

- hierotitan : a sacred construct boosting lich-priests nearby, and with its own bound spells (ray of sacred light, or soul slaying death spell)

- war sphinx, used as a mount for a King or 4 Tomb gards, will trample lesser infantry

- Necrosphinx, flying dispenser of death, a killer of monsters

- stalkers: serpent like constructs with a death gaze that transform their target into sand if not fast enough

- sepulcher knights: elite tomb gards mounted on cobra-like constructs

- new character: necrotect, repearing nearby constructs (small healing spell that target only lifeless being if it is possible ?), and giving their unit hatred (some king of onebattlespell giving a bonus to attack maybe ?)

[WraithLord]

yummy :)

[Soyweiser]

I think the asp bows are MR and not PR. My own undead PR troops got poisoned.

[llamabeast]

Wow, that's a bug. Well spotted.

[Soyweiser]

Also most of the undead priests cannot go underwater. While the one commander without magic and the mage can. A bit odd. (most troops can go underwater, except the watcher and the chariots).

[llamabeast]

Yeah, that's deliberate. The mummified units can't go in the water (it would get very yucky).

[danayel]

A bit of a thread necro (ironic?), but after playing a few games with Tomb Kings I have to say I love them.

Just something random, but the flavor text for the Watchers says that they spend their time "...spotting any treasure hunters far off, moving silently silently through the necropoli, and killing without warning".

That sounds like they should have a patrol bonus and/or stealth.

Right now their main purpose seems to be as thug killers, or expensive light infantry, but I could see them getting a lot more use if they had either of the above abilities.

Patrollers for hunting down those that would defile the sanctity of the tombs, and/or sneaky ambush squads to jump out of the shadows on commanders and small squads who dare venture into the dead cities.

Though with no stealthy commanders, you would need to put a crown on a scout of the like to move them stealthily - which may be a good limiter on their effectiveness.